Lenovo Thinkpad X200 Tablet Review

About a month ago I was looking for a laptop for college. I wanted a tablet because I just have to have those fancy extras. Now I was not necessarily looking at how fast it was going to run but more looking at battery life. I hear of all the people with the nice looking Dell laptops but they always say to me the battery life on my laptop is about two hours. About a year ago I had heard from another friend about Lenovo. He told me these laptops are supposed to have superior battery life up to about 10 hours.

Now I'm going to college and the three companies I can get a discount from, through the college, are Lenovo, Dell and Apple. I naturally went for Lenovo hearing about their superior battery life. I went through and customized the system coming up with these specs:

• 1.86 GHz Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU
• 2 GB of RAM
• Windows Vista(TM) Home Premium
• Fingerprint Reader
• 320GB Hard Drive
• 4 Year Accidental Damage Protection Warranty
• 2 GB Integrated Turbo Memory
• 12.1" Wideview Superbright Display
• Integrated Camera
• Thinkpad X200 UltraBase with DVD Dual Layer 8x burner
• 8 Cell Battery
• 3-1 Media card reader with modem
• Integrated Bluetooth
• Integrated WIFI

Of these things I have not used the modem, the warranty or bluetooth. So there is no way I can review these features. However, based on the other features I could safely assume that I will have no problem using them when the time comes.

First, I will review the overall performance of the system. The boot is somewhat slower than I had anticipated. I'm sure if i took the time to optimize it using the different tools available I could speed this up. The system ran the Sims 3 just fine which is great for me because its the newest game I have. I was able to run it fine with two monitors running. Doing this I had the Sims 3 on one screen. I had AIM, Internet Explorer and Skype running on the other. I did have a few problems with programs, which I believe has nothing to do with the computer but I will include them anyways. Windows Defender would not update, I would have had to do this manually. Also, whenever I would close a tab with Myspace in it, Internet Explorer would keep opening new windows with Myspace in them and would stop at 10 windows but when I would close one many more would open. To fix this I switched to Mozilla Firefox which solved my problem and I am now using AVG anti-virus instead of Windows Defender.

Next, I would like to review the different pieces of the system that are not the battery, I will save that for last. First, the fingerprint reader, this device was very easy to setup and works perfectly. I have never had to use my password to login to Windows. My hard drive has not failed so I am very happy with that. The turbo memory has gone unnoticed since I have not used the laptop without it so I assume it is doing its job properly. The display is a bit small but works fine for what I need, however, is the only size offered for this particular model. Turning down the brightness, if you are inside still allows you to see but makes it harder for prying eyes to see your screen. The 180 degree swivel works nicely and the screen auto-rotates based on settings you can change. The tablet uses Wacom drivers and works flawlessly. I have used it with the Gimp on more than one occasion and loved it. The "pen flicks" can be a bit difficult to use and can be set off accidentally which is why I have just disabled them. The webcam works perfectly with Skype. I have not had a problem with it yet. The ultrabase and DVD burner both work nicely. It can be a bit difficult to eject the ultrabase right the first time but hitting fn+F9 on the keyboard makes it all that much easier, this I figured out after the second time I ejected the ultrabase. The DVD burner works great and has given me no problems. The 3-1 media card reader works excellent. I put in the memory card from my camera and transferred them over with no problems. The WIFI is working better than I had ever hoped for. It connects right away and does not drop my connection. The only problem I have had is if i took it to school turned it on where I had no connection and then put it to sleep and took it home where I have a connection, it would not always automatically connect I would have to restart my computer first.

Finally, I would like to review the battery life. To date I did get ten hours out of the battery. It was in the ultimate power saving mode. The back light was all the way down, the media bay was removed, my WIFI switch was off and there was nothing in any of the ports. I was working on my website for a class while doing this so the only program open was Notepad++. Many times, however I can get seven or eight hours out of normal use as long as the back light is all the way down. This was a big advantage and now all my friends hate me because they get maybe four or six hours with their back light down and just typing a paper for class.

To summarize, I would give this computer nine out of ten stars for my usage of it. It has not failed me except the battery life is not quite as long as I had expected, the pen flicks are difficult to use and I had a bit of trouble with the ultrabase the first time I used it. Despite those things, I have enjoyed every minute of using it and when the time comes to get a new laptop will be getting another from the same line.